A Ramble About Race

Race is one of those subjects I very rarely talk or even think about. I think this is because I grew up in Orange County, California, probably one of the most inter-racial, multicultural, and pluralistic societies in the United States. At my high school alone there were sixty different languages spoken on a daily basis. There really isn't a majority ethnic group in Orange County, or in Southern California in general. There are folks of European descent, folks of Central and South American descent, folks of Asian and Middle Eastern descent, and there are folks of African descent and there is a pretty good melting pot of each to the point that my kids' public school class photographs from when they were little could easily resemble a class photograph from an international school overseas.

It's not that race doesn't come up, but for those of us who grew up with friends and classmates from dozens of different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, unless our parents made it a big deal for us, it just wasn't. It's the reason why, even though I can't read them, I know the difference between Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese writing at a glance whereas someone from my wife's hometown in Idaho might be hard pressed to identify which was which.

When I was growing up, I've always admired African Americans. I always saw African Americans as doctors, teachers, or lawyers, or just a people with a good, unique wisdom about them. Cosby was on TV, and the fact that he was a doctor and his wife was a lawyer wasn't unusual at all to my mind. Some of the men I looked up to as a kid were African American, one in particular who worked with my church's youth group when I was in grade school was one of the neatest guys I knew. I saw African American kids as gang members too, but in equal numbers with white kids, Hispanic kids, and Asian kids. It wasn't something which was relegated to one racial group or another, but a problem which plagued everyone (and still does).

So, the truth is when I see the kind of racial divide, or the bullying that happens against African Americans, Hispanic Americans, or any other particular ethnic grouping of Americans, I just don't get it. I don't get it when one group of human beings that descend from a certain ethno-type bully or belittle another group from a different ethno-type.

From a purely genetic standpoint, it has been proven that we all of us, every human being on the planet, descends from a single woman (Mitochondrial Eve), and at another point in history, a single man. Technically speaking, we are more than just the same species, we are all family. We are all the same ethno-type just removed from one another by thousands of years. And this is true whether you are a Christian or an Athiest; you are genetically related to the human being standing next to you no matter who it is. For example, I just found out that I have at least five percent Ashkenazi Jewish DNA through my mother. This isn't something I had known about or even imagined. It's not a lot, but technically this makes me a descendant of Abraham and genetically related to every Jewish and Arab person on the planet because without that one common ancestor, none of us, including me, would exist.

So, for me, the idea of discriminating against someone based on their “race” is laughably ridiculous. It's absurd to the point of idiocy. And yet here we are in the United States still having to deal with it. Whole groups of people treated as second class citizens because of the color of their skin and/or their ancestral ethnicity.

An unarmed African American kid is shot six times in the middle of the street by a white police officer while holding his hands high in the air. An unarmed African American young woman is shot to death on the front porch-step by the white man she was trying to ask for help. Not long ago an unarmed African American kid was walking home one night from a convenience store and he was shot to death by some white guy on neighborhood watch. The first African American President in the history of the United States, a decent, sincere, and moral man, is vilified and disrespected from day one like no other President in history by a mostly white opposition. And it goes on and on and on. African American parents have to tell their children the facts of this kind of life and talk with them about it like no white parent has ever had to talk with their kids. It's a talk I will never have to have with my kids. I will never have to tell my son that people will automatically assume he's up to no good because of the color of his skin. I will never have to tell my daughters that shopkeepers will automatically assume they're going to shoplift because of the color of their skin. My son will likely never have to worry about a Police officer shooting him for a minor offense because of the color of his skin.

What's ironic to me about this is that part of our ancestry is Cherokee through my paternal grandfather. In the 1800s, just that fact and the small amount of Cherokee that we are would have been enough excuse for the US government to force us to march with the rest of the Cherokee nation from Georgia to Oklahoma on foot, illegally confiscating what land and property we possessed and giving it to “white” citizens. A third of the Cherokee nation died on that forced march. If we hadn't the good fortune to be born when we were, we could have too. For a large part of the history of the United States, prejudice and discrimination against all Native Americans was so intense as to be genocidal (and yes, actual genocide was attempted by the US government at various times against different Native American tribes). It's a fact I never forget regardless of the color of my or my children's skins. And yet a further irony is that because my kids are so light skinned, we couldn't chance enrolling them in the public schools on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho because we were warned by the school itself that they would be routinely bullied and victimized by the Nez Perce kids because of the historic discrimination against Native Americans by a white US government, settlers, and miners.

It's a given that this kind of nonsense shouldn't happen, and yet it does and continues to do so. Especially in the Eastern US where there has been so much historic racism and conflict between those of European descent and those of African descent mostly due to the slave trade and the kidnapping and degradation of Africans for hundreds of years in North America. Some of our best and brightest scientists, thinkers, politicians, and great people have been of African descent, and yet they still have to warn their kids about how they're going to be singled out even if they're not doing anything wrong. Is it any wonder if they become angry and disillusioned?

I don't have a good spiritual lesson here. I'm not going to try and force one either. If someone's ethnic background still matters to a follower of Jesus Christ then something is wrong with that follower. Period. I really shouldn't even have to say that. No, I just wanted to point out the absurdity of it and hope someone listens.